The Exit
"They say Marcella has returned."
When that word reached me, I was in the middle of negotiating with the elven elders.
Not that the whole Elder Council was contributing anything. More than half of them simply sat there, blank-eyed, and one never stopped smoking.
The item on the table was, of course, the opening of a distribution route.
"Permit us to dispatch imperial mages and raise a magic circle in Medellin. It will never be turned to any improper purpose. In the first place, it is impossible to move a great host of men and horses by teleport, is it not?"
"It will be used for one thing alone: the transport of heroin. Consider it. For the leaders of Medellin to travel back and forth in person merely to purchase a little heroin is a tiresome business."
"Should you accept, we will answer with a fitting recompense."
I kept my tongue busy. At the outset they had looked ready to grant whatever I demanded, but it was not proving so easy. Every elder was a heroin user, true enough, yet that did not mean every one of them had been reduced to an idiot. Among addicts of the same drug, some giggle vacantly from morning to night, while others somehow keep showing up to work. There was nothing strange in it.
Even so, the moment they let me into this room, the balance had already tipped. I was wearing their caution down with powder and talk, and Marcella arrived at precisely that moment.
Faster than I expected.
I decided to receive her together with the elders. More precisely, I had no choice. The mere fact that I was being entertained as a guest in the heart of the Great Forest would be enough to drive her mad. For all I knew, she was already picturing elders of five and six centuries groveling at my feet and begging for heroin.
A commotion broke out beyond the council chamber almost at once.
"Out of the way."
"Lady Marcella…! A joint council is in session. If you enter bearing arms—"
"Fine. Here."
"What?"
She seemed to have submitted to disarmament readily enough. I had muddied the waters with the bait of a pardon, so she was being more civil than I had—
The door of the negotiation hall blew apart with a hollow, thunderous crack, as if it had never been there at all.
The one responsible was, of course, Marcella. Green hair bound in a ponytail, and a rather shabby set of clothes, as if she had been rolling through the forest. Once she had been the young leader of the hardline faction in elven society. Now she was Marcella, former Grand Warrior, cast into the abyss after trying to overthrow her betters.
She did not raise a disturbance at once. She only fixed me with an expression I could not quite name, and then, slowly, she opened her mouth.
"…I meant to demand an explanation from you. Allan Madoff."
"About the pardon?"
"Yes. I meant to ask what you hoped to gain by playing that little game. But on the way here, I realized it would be meaningless. I have come to understand that everything you do is driven by political calculation."
"You are that kind of animal. …I know it now. Far too late."
So saying, Marcella let her eyes travel over the elders. Several of her own clan sat on the Council. Elven society had always been ruled by the Five Great Clans, who styled themselves High Elves, and even in this murderous atmosphere one of the elders puffing away without a care was a distant relative of hers. On her face, as she looked at them, I could not even read anger.
"…Allan Madoff. You know this already, but I am the one who commanded the operation to drive your imperial army out."
"I know."
"I used the terrain to lay traps—traps aimed precisely at the feet and the ankles—and had them smeared with animal dung and the juice of poisonous herbs. I even ambushed the troops sent to carry off the soldiers who fell into them. More than once. Whenever I could, I left them only gravely wounded."
"You judged it more effective to maim than to kill."
"Yes. While I did such things to humans, I felt no guilt. Knowing that you feared me, I felt accomplishment instead. …I imagine you are the same, Allan Madoff."
Understand me, then. That was what she said, and then she shut her mouth tight.
A moment later a brilliant surge of power began to coil around her arm. There was no need to guess what she meant to attempt. An Aura Blade—aura given shape and edge, what the East calls sword-qi forged into steel. She was hardly about to put on a martial display for its own sake. In the end, it was meant for me.
Even so, I did not feel my life was in danger.
"Stop, Marcella."
A wall of elves had already risen between her and me.
Allan had to die.
And yet she could not move. It was the voices of her own kin—scolding her, stopping her, pleading with her. She wanted to ignore them, but she could not, because the elders had planted themselves squarely in her way. Their words piled over one another. They would ration the smoking of heroin by age and bloodline, so she needn't worry about treasure pouring out of elven hands. Did she think they failed to see through a human's mercantile greed? She knew how good heroin was, didn't she?
The finishing blow, among all of that, came from the mouth of Grand Elder Ariella.
At that single sentence, the picture in Marcella's mind wavered. The aura that had been pouring out a dazzling light began to flicker, unstable.
Smoke together? In a situation like this?
The truth was that even now, about once a day, the craving still rose in her. It had been worse right after they stripped her of the Grand Warrior's post. She had overcome all of it. She meant to kill Allan Madoff, the root of every problem, and even that they were trying to prevent.
Why in the world are they stopping me?
She knew the answer, and still she forced the question on herself. The elders—and not only the elders, but middle-aged elves who held pivotal offices in Medellin—were watching her with open wariness. Some of them looked ready to answer her at any moment. Well. She had moved to use force in front of the elders, so of course they would be on guard. No. Was it really so natural? She was not trying to attack her own kin. She meant only to remove one man, Allan Madoff. Why were they stopping her?
Why. Why, of all things.
While Marcella hesitated, the Grand Elder smiled at her with a softened face.
"Marcella. Do you think we're being led about by Consul Allan? …We're not. The truth is, I read that human's mind. He told us about something called a tube… A little sniff through the nose is pleasant enough, but it's hard for a lot of people to enjoy it together."
"…Grand Elder."
"I saw through that. …Hehe. Which is to say, we hold the advantage in these talks."
Marcella only stared blankly at the Grand Elder as she said it. That languid expression, intoxication written all over it. She did not know what a tube was, but the old woman seemed delighted to have saved on the price of heroin. Falling into heroin was the problem in the first place, and she was pleased to have saved a little money? Marcella could not even be sure any money had truly been saved.
No. Even so, I have to kill him.
She repeated it to herself and tried to fix her eyes on Allan, but even that had already grown difficult. While she hesitated, still more elves had closed around her. One of them even drew a blade, muttered "ah," and slid it back into the sheath.
Were they stopping her because of the chance of war with the Empire? If so, she could have understood it. Marcella herself had always been a consistent hawk, but most elves were not, and waging a total war while the leadership was in this state would be suicide. If they were restraining her out of that fear, she could have forgiven them.
But no matter how she turned it over, it was plain they were restraining her not for the future of their race, but to protect the heroin apothecary. To stake even death on heroin. Did they not even worry that she, already fallen from power, might feign madness and turn on her own kin?
…Of course, Marcella had never dreamed of doing any such thing. She was doing this, in the end, for her own people. She wanted only to keep every elf from sinking into heroin. And those same people were blocking her with their bodies.
Then what, exactly, have I been doing any of this for…?
The aura she had drawn with grim resolve had vanished long ago. Allan Madoff's face, standing behind the wall of elves, was unmarked—not a scratch. If he had been wearing a sneer, she might at least have exploded. He was not. The man only nodded, as if he had known it would come to this.
"Ha."
Marcella simply laughed. One of the elders patted her shoulder and told her she had judged wisely.
The disturbance passed, and the negotiations lurched to an awkward halt. An elf had burst in and even manifested aura, and yet peace had returned—an eerie thing, but entirely possible in Medellin as it stood. One could already treat the entire leadership as sunk in severe addiction.
Marcella stood blankly in the middle of the emptied hall. I approached her with elven warriors flanking me on either side. In the look she turned on me, I felt no particular hostility. There was even a heroin pipe in her hand, something one of the elders had pressed on her with the promise that it would comfort her. She was not smoking it, but her fingers would not stop twitching.
"If I smoke it… I'll feel better, won't I?"
She put the question to me while her eyes moved between my face and the pipe.
"I won't stop you."
"Of course you wouldn't. A human. You."
Her face already said she had given up, but my business here was not finished.
"Your Grand Elder says she means to issue heroin only to the Five Great Clans. And that even within the clans, she won't give it to any elf under a hundred and fifty. If every elf begins to enjoy heroin, consumption will climb without end."
She said nothing.
"I think it a comparatively wise decision. I don't even call it discrimination. Among you elves, the nobler the blood, the heavier the responsibility—especially in military matters. Monopolizing heroin in exchange for that doesn't strike me as greed."
"What is it you're trying to say…?"
Only now did Marcella ask, slow and dragging. I decided to answer her. I wasn't needling her. I was sounding her out. If she would only lend a little help, the work would grow much easier.
"The Grand Elder's intentions are sound, as I see it, but in the end every elf is going to want heroin. Consumption will surge as well. I can supply it, of course. Whether I can actually collect a proper price is another question."
Again she was silent.
"Marcella. The truth is, I would also prefer that heroin consumption stay within a reasonable line."
I was telling her, in a roundabout way, that I had no wish to addict every last elf. There were ears about, so I had put it obliquely, but the meaning seemed to have landed. At some point she had let the pipe fall. Now she was looking straight at me.